Criticising dance in the modern world

Much of the debate about criticism, a topic of the day, centres on the internet, and the problems it poses to the traditional role of the critic.

Theatre critic Alison Croggon wrote a compelling defense of the internet, The Return of the Amateur Critic and published it on her well-known theatre blog. There are many who agree with her, particularly in relation to film and theatre criticism. There are many who do not. Does the internet really need defending? It’s not as though books, publishing, are threatening it. Whether you think the internet brings a wonderful new democratic spirit to criticism or not is almost irrelevant. Advocating for the new or old ways of writing and publishing criticism has all the tension of a debate, but one in which, I confess, I find it hard to be interested.

What does pain me, however, is the generally low feeling attaching to criticism, whether published in newspapers or online. Dance criticism, a delicate subspecies of analytical writing, is in particularly poor shape. So poor it’s usually left out of the debates about arts criticism altogether. Where specialist dance writers exist, they grip white-knuckled to their posts, and their words are equally as nervous and pale.

In an interview with choreographer Wayne McGregor published in TheAustralian (‘Bodies Misbehaving Beautifully’ January 14, 2011), Valerie Lawson quoted David Jays of the Sunday Times, who in 2008 wrote that, “watching his [Wayne McGregor’s] work is like being licked by a panther's juicy, rasping tongue while you're revising maths.” ArtsJournal.com headlined the article, adding: “Is this One of the Great Sentences in Dance Criticism?” Lawson nods approval, writing it is McGregor “personified”.

Of course, a sentence taken in isolation is never the whole story; yet, I think it signifies much of what is chronic about dance criticism today. The sentence, while silly, is not completely nonsensical. We can yet tax ourselves to imagine the scenario, and even conjure the tactile sensation that Jays suggests, but after the effort we are no closer to imaging McGregor’s dance – in fact, far from it. I am distracted by what a panther is doing in the maths room. Then I thought, perhaps I am being assaulted by the curios of a 19th-century Parisian salon, but balked at being the sort of bored, affected aristocrat who is bothered about proving axioms … but who cares about the literal dissolution. It doesn’t even matter that McGregor references animals and maths in Entity (2008), the dance piece being discussed; the problem is that Jays, for the love of his own words, has failed to notice that he has dribbled rather than written about dance.

A critic of another genre might not get away with that sort of empty gesturing at criticism to the same extent; but in dance, I think primarily because the art form is ephemeral by nature, critics clutch at abstract imagery, hoping that the readers are entertained or keeping up. Dance is a difficult art form to pin down: all the more reason not to stray too far.

This panther quote obviously shouldn’t be taken too seriously, it is just someone waxing poetic; someone who is perhaps rapturously taken in yet naive about dance, but it nevertheless transgresses onto the plane of serious dance criticism, for the author doesn’t actually think it is a joke (one could be forgiven) but might be the kind of person who writes in a perpetually cynical mood. I sense a degree of jaundice, a sardonic coupling of the natural and rational. There should be a sort of red-alert button for cynicism in criticism, for even if the material gives reason to be cynical, there is a sacred requirement to abstain and treat everything presented with an even hand. That is the only way to counter the vast amounts of cynicism in contemporary art, dance included.

The article climaxed with Lawson throwing in the now compulsory reference to author Jennifer Homans’s claim that “ballet is dead” (for those of you unacquainted with the history of the controversy, Ms Homans has written a new and thorough history of ballet, Apollo’s Angels, the epilogue to which, entitled ‘The Masters Are Dead and Gone’, sums up her conclusions over the course of a decade of research and writing). McGregor replies that critics and audiences may be too close in time to necessarily recognise a masterpiece. Or as McGregor puts it, the pieces are yet to be “subsumed into people’s consciousness”.

If ballet still has her life breath, the critics who fly into a sycophantic frenzy at every provocative tendu aimed at creating “unlikely” beauty do her a grave disservice. A better approach allows the beauty of the work to be at the centre. After all, criticism isn’t really art in itself, and we value it for how it illuminates art, the object of love. And it ought to have the qualities to enlighten: clarity measure for measure with tone and temper, transparency and above all rationality – that coaxes the darkest shade and brightest light. If there are such masterpieces yet to make themselves felt, it is with a rational approach we are best equipped to uncover them. Dance critics need to be especially attuned for the Muse is fleet, and so is the audience.

Penelope Ford is the editor of Fjord Review, a journal of independent dance criticism, written about dance in Australia and published in Melbourne.